The Alien Universe
28 April 2022
The backyard of a property I rented for a number of years was sheltered by an enormous ancient oak tree that had at one time stood obediently inside my next-door neighbor's property line. Throughout the years, the old oak continued to push his “shoulder” against a section of the good-neighbor fence that ringed my backyard, thus habitually breaking it open enough to allow the neighbor's small dogs to slip through into my backyard. Once in my yard, those dogs barked at me like I was the intruder!
Following any good-sized storm, the fence would re-open and every time it did, I would report the matter of the broken fence, again. With a lick and a promise, the busy, preoccupied owner would hurriedly repair the hole himself. A real and permanent fence repair was needed.
At last, my landlord decided to relinquish a few square feet of his property to that mighty oak. Finally, the backyard fence was going to be repaired! A new section of fence was to be constructed well enough away from the tree to give it some stretching room. Though the repairs had begun in earnest, by the end of that first day they had not been finished. A temporary bright-orange safety netting was strung on the property line to serve as a fence for a couple days.
That night, the little dogs next door barked in surprise and wonder as they peered through the orange netting into the dry uncluttered moonscape of my back yard. I am sure they were suspicious of the unfamiliar shifting shadows they spied. Their view once blocked by the now missing section of the wooden fence, opened onto the alien universe next to theirs.
The dogs and their fence remind me of Man and the Universes he can't see-existing an inch away from the end of his nose. Maybe someday that fence will be torn down and we will bark in wonder and surprise at what we see in the alien universe, right next door to ours!